Shoes That Put Women in Their Place

TORONTO — YOU can’t even really see the shoes.

In many of the photos of women on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, the elegant gowns fall all the way to the ground, obscuring a view of their special-occasion footwear.

So why on earth would it matter if women entering the prestigious celebration of cinema chose not to confine themselves in difficult-to-walk-in heels, opting for something more manageable — or even fashion-forward, in a flat?

It did seem to matter to someone, though. It was reported last week that some women were turned away from the festival for the sartorial sin of wearing flats. High heels, it turns out, appeared to be part of the unwritten red-carpet dress code. Wearing heels changes how you stand, how you walk and how you are perceived. Even if they are visible only in small flashes, when a hem moves to one side, they are, in essence, a foundation garment: shoes that keep women in their place.

The heel has come to be the icon of feminine allure and even female power. But what, exactly, is this power and why do only women have the privilege of using heels to convey it?

Heeled footwear that gave the wearer a bit of a lift, or an advantage while on horseback, were not the original domain of women. They were first introduced into Western fashion around the turn of the 17th century from Western Asia. Privileged men, followed by women, eagerly wore them for more than 130 years as expressions of power and prestige.

This changed, however, in the 18th century when the distinctions between male and female dress began to reflect larger cultural shifts. Regardless of class, men were deemed uniquely endowed with rational thought and thus worthy of political enfranchisement. Heels were not required on this new equal playing field. Men began to wear the nascent three-piece suit in somber hues and were discouraged from standing out from one another. Alexander Pope, writing early in the century, composed a satirical list of men’s club rules that included the warning that if a member “shall wear the Heels of his shoes exceeding one inch and half... the Criminal shall instantly be expell’d... Go from among us, and be tall if you can!”

Women, in contrast, were represented as being naturally deficient in reason and unfit for either education or citizenship. Fashion was redefined as frivolous and feminine, and the high heel became a potent accessory of ditsy desirability. The “lively” character Harriot “tottering on her French heels and with her head as unsteady as her feet” in a 1781 story “The Delineator,” represented the typical 18th-century feminine ideal. The high heel was then suspect for other reasons, too; it had supposed connections to female vanity and deceitfulness. Added to this was the increasing fear that women would use heels and other sexualized modes of dress to seduce men and usurp power. Marie Antoinette was the poster child for this, and this idea is the cornerstone of the contemporary conceit that high heels are accessories of female power.

By the 19th century, the invention of photography, and its immediate adoption by pornographers, established the curious convention of depicting women stripped of their clothing with the exception of their shoes.

The heel also retained its associations with female irrationality. As one anti-suffrage agitator wrote in The New York Times in 1871, “Suffrage! Right to hold office! Show us first the woman who has ... sense and taste enough to dress attractively and yet to walk down Fifth-avenue wearing ... a shoe which does not destroy both her comfort and her gait.”